CITY ROOM BLOGGING AT NYTIMES.COM/CITYROOM.; Snowball Fight, Then Web Flurry

By EMILY S. RUEB

Published: December 22, 2009

On a night when holiday parties were in full swing, Saturday's snowstorm kept many inside.

But in Times Square, much of it now closed to car traffic to encourage pedestrian traffic, a group of adults stopped to scoop up and carefully mold snow into crumbling projectiles to hurl at strangers.

James Sims, a blogger and editor for BroadwayWorld.com, was on his way from a 42nd Street movie theater to meet his companion, who was seeing ''Mama Mia!'' a few blocks north at about 10:30 p.m. on Saturday. As he neared the Father Francis D. Duffy Monument and Duffy Square, he saw two opposing lines of people stand as if about to start a game of Red Rover, he said. Shortly after, arcing white comets with powdery dust tails filled the space between the two lines.

Trying to shield his cellphone from the driving snow, he posted what he described as a ''pretty poorly framed and blurry'' image to Twitpic before powering down to conserve his battery.

By that point, the crowd had erupted, with people setting down their shopping bags to join in. One police officer stepped into the firing range to curtail the event, but the crowd's chorus of boos sent him on his way.

When Mr. Sims turned his phone back on several hours later, thousands of people had retweeted his photo, and by morning, it had ended up on Boing Boing, a Web site run by editors who trawl the Internet for unusual stories. Mr. Sims's photo caused a flurry of retweets and follower requests.

And now, there is a Facebook group to commemorate ''The Times Square Snowball Fight of 2009,'' which was created by four students who claim they started the fight.

Asked why his grainy photo of the moment was so popular, Mr. Sims responded, ''The setting was so out of the ordinary.'' EMILY S. RUEB